


Broken Glass: Part Eight – Through the Looking Glass

by motsureru



Series: Broken Glass [8]
Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Awkwardness, Developing Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Law Enforcement, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-10
Updated: 2007-08-10
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:24:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motsureru/pseuds/motsureru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spoilers for all of Season 1. This is a continuation after Season 1, Sylar/Mohinder-centric</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Glass: Part Eight – Through the Looking Glass

**Teaser:** _He gasped- expecting a body, expecting death to be staring right back at him in the crimson. But as he reached up and pulled the rusted chain to the hanging bulb, he found penitence gazing back at him instead._

 

.8 Through the Looking Glass

 

            The soup was delicious. 

            How Sylar had managed to make a vegetable soup from what few things that _hadn’t_ gone bad in Mohinder’s refrigerator would forever remain a mystery. All that Mohinder was sure of was that when he came out of the shower, he smelled something appetizing and thirty minutes after his shower was over (once he’d built up the nerve to enter the kitchen again) there was soup for two and glasses unexpectedly sitting out on the small table. Mohinder wasn’t quite sure how to take that. 

            Sylar was simply sitting at the table, one of Chandra’s books pulled off the shelf and in his hands. He read with a slight squint; Mohinder couldn’t tell if it meant he should have worn glasses or that he was very intensely absorbed in what he read. Mohinder joined him quietly, feeling as though he was the one disturbing the peace in his own kitchen. The glasses were filled with iced tea, not hot tea. Mohinder had forgotten about the kettle he put on earlier entirely. Picking up the glass on his side of the table, Mohinder went to drink it and then suddenly stopped-

            “Not drugged. I promise.” Sylar lifted his eyes from the book and closed it with a loud snap.

            “…I wasn’t thinking that,” Mohinder mumbled guiltily, bringing the glass to his mouth.

            Sylar set the book aside, spread a napkin in his lap, and took hold of his spoon. “Bon appétit,” he said simply, lifting the bowl a little as he began to eat. 

            …Had Sylar been waiting for him for dinner?

            Mohinder set down his glass, took up his spoon, and began to eat warily. He had been wary without real cause- the soup was fabulous. Mohinder stared down at his bowl in disbelief. “This… is delicious,” he admitted.

            “It’s simple,” was all Sylar replied.

            The rest of the meal was eaten in surreal silence. Mohinder had not gone so far as to work through in his mind actual conversation between the two of them; as a companion Sylar did not seem as prone to conversation as Zane Taylor had been, and so none was had.

            When the meal (which consisted of seconds) was over, Mohinder offered a few sparse words to clean up and did just that. As he cleaned, Sylar picked the book back up and went about his business. It made Mohinder slightly nervous how comfortable the man was in his apartment. Almost as if he’d never left, or never pinned Mohinder against the ceiling and killed Peter Petrelli there. Perhaps he made himself at home in all his victims’ abodes?

            “I… was thinking if you want to rest… there’s only one bed.” Mohinder broke the silence, hands and eyes on the dishes in the sink. “You can have it. I work late into the night anyway… and there’s a futon that turns into a bed in the adjoining hall. You probably need a more comfortable rest than I do, while you recover.” He struggled to extend his stiff politeness but surely Sylar, with his astute hearing, knew of Mohinder’s apprehension.

            “Thanks,” Sylar said absently, eyes still on his book.

            Mohinder turned off the sink and let the awkwardness settle to its resting point. He had a feeling there were going to be many nights like this, pretending that the other person only vaguely existed in order to avoid confrontation. Perhaps that was best.

 

            “So he’s supposed to live here?” Murphy asked, looking up at the label “1B” in white convex lettering. 

            Detective Preston was struggling with the lock but after a hard slam of his shoulder, the door burst inwards, revealing warm, stale air inside. “Yeah… I interviewed the land lord just before you got here. Said it’s listed to Gabriel Gray, but the guy cut out some time ago with no explanation. Was paid up for the whole year- just left one night without warning. He hadn’t found a new tenant… nice place he says, but he has to redo the back. He said we’d see what he meant.” 

            Stepping inside, the two men moved slowly, listening to the creak of old boards and watching as the reflections off cars flashed through the half-closed blinds. The entire apartment was infested; on every wall and every available space there were bookshelves protruding in their emptiness, thriving on the wall space. Every board, even and symmetrical as the last, had gathered dust but stood as a testament to the army of knowledge that had once spawned there.

            “Jesus… he must’ve had his own library in this place… Hardly any room for furniture,” Murphy murmured, dragging a finger along a gray shelf and rubbing the dust between his fingers. He reached over and flipped up the light switch- the few lights that came on barely lit a thing. “This place gives me the creeps.”

            Preston gave a walk through the tiny kitchen, glancing at the bare table, pausing to look at a curved mark against the wall where a tea pot might have sat. “Yeah, well, the landlord said Gray was a nice enough guy. A little weird, a loner, but unobtrusive. Said he owned a shop in Brooklyn. We’ll have to look into it.”

            “What sort of shop?” Murphy asked, leaning back to peer at the small lamps on the wall. They resembled miniature candelabra of sorts. Creepier yet.

            “Said he didn’t know. Electronics maybe? Fixing things. Landlord said that just before this guy cut out there was some sort of trouble here. Some strangers came snooping around the apartment and called the cops… whatever it was fizzled out, so my guess is it’s not on record.” Preston stepped slowly out into the main room, running his flashlight over the walls and to the ceiling, right to left. “Gray doesn’t have a record either, so we’ll have to ask around to see who was on shift in this area and fill in the blanks.” The detective lowered his flashlight slowly and then winced as the light reflected back. A mirror? A dingy one at that. Preston walked forward and touched a hand to the brown rusted spots.

            Murphy followed behind him and raised an eyebrow. “It’s just a mirror.”

            “A crappy mirror,” Preston confirmed. He ran a finger down the center, where a single line of division fell between the two sections of the glass. “A solitary bookworm with this much stuff was probably a neat-freak too. Why would he keep a mirror like this? It’s an eyesore.” Preston tried to pry his short fingernails between the two pieces of the mirror; as his fingers pressed in, he heard a click. Both men stepped back as the mirrors parted towards them in invitation.

            “Oh shit,” Murphy muttered first, poking his flashlight down the dark hallway. A string of bulbs lead the way above. Flicking a switch to the right, they buzzed to life, but remained dim, dying, seemingly. 

            “Watch your mouth…” Preston murmured, tilting his head as he took a cautious step inside. His hand rested reflexively on the holster at his hip. The walls looked as if they’d had the proper plaster torn away, revealing the ribs of a once healthy hallway. Holes riddled the boards where tacks must have once hung pictures and even more bookshelves lined the gutted beams in all areas. The walls echoed of something sinister that had lived there. “…Maybe… a photo lab…? Back here…” Preston tried to reason aloud, moving cautiously, as if they’d find someone still living in the shell of this apartment.

            “No ventilation for that…” Murphy replied, a step behind the man. “I dunno what you’re thinking, Pres, but guys just don’t keep hidden hallways behind mirrors if they’re up to good, you know?”

            “I know, Chuck.” Preston turned to his left and stopped suddenly. Something tall and black was before him: plastic bags, hung like the skin of the kill. Preston lifted his flashlight to it, watching the refraction of the light into a thousand pieces. His expression became more serious by the second.

            “…” Murphy looked over his shoulder, his own hand falling on his holster. “…You gonna open it?” he breathed out.

            Preston lifted his hand to the plastic and slowly wrapped his fingers around the edges. He pulled back sharply, and when his flashlight touched the walls there was red. He gasped, expecting a body, expecting death to be staring right back at him in the crimson. But as he reached up and pulled the rusted chain to the hanging bulb, Preston found penitence gazing back at him instead. “…Good… God…”

 

  
**_I have sinned_ ** _Father    Ihavesinned I have sinned **I have sinned** Forgive me Father_  


  
_Forgive me Father Forgive me **Father** For I     _ _HAVE **SINNED** FATHER FORGIVE ME_  


  
_ Forgive me Father **Forgive me** _ _FORGIVE ME I For I have sinned **I have sinned** Father_  


  
_I have sinned I have **sinned** I have **sinned** _ _FORGIVE ME FATHER FOR _  


  
_**I HAVE SINNED**_ ** FORGIVE ME **  


            “Holy…” Murphy’s eyes widened as he peered past Preston. “Did he…?”

            The echo of something sinister was the echo of murder. Preston was sure of it now. He took a deep breath. “…I don’t know what’s scarier, Charles… seeing this… or knowing he left this place weeks before his mother was murdered.”

            Murphy turned sharply to his partner, eyes narrowing in realization. “He’s killed before this!”

            Preston nodded slowly. “And we’ve got to find him before he does it again.”

 

            In the next handful of days, Mohinder found that a strange sort of domesticity had fallen over his apartment, not unlike when Eden had haunted the residence over his shoulder. As predicted, it was silent most of the time, with a few awkward bursts of conversation in between. The typing of keys as Mohinder worked on his laptop was accompanied by the turn of pages while Sylar read and every now and then a tea break was in order. Whenever Mohinder made the tea he always did so for two out of courtesy, and when Sylar did it he returned the favor. 

            That was not to say, of course, that oddities were not to be found between the two. When Mohinder awoke the first morning (at his desk where he’d fallen asleep), it was because of a ticking at his desk that was not there before. When he opened his bleary eyes, Mohinder found that his father’s broken desk clock, which he had filed away on a shelf, was now facing him, telling him it was 8:37 in the morning. When Mohinder sat up, he saw Sylar in the middle of the room with the wall clock in his lap and a screwdriver in his hand. The man had systematically repaired all the time devices in the house and set them in unison. Mohinder was sure he wouldn’t have been the only person to find it bizarre, but he didn’t question it either. 

            In the evening, Mohinder also found a mysterious slip of paper magnetically stuck to his refrigerator. A grocery list. Apparently he needed to go shopping. Scratching the back of his head, Mohinder glanced in Sylar’s direction, to where he sat with another book in hand. “Did… you want to go shopping with me?” he asked, feeling a little shiver go down his spine when he asked those words.

            “It’s best I don’t, you know, go out in public,” Sylar replied, looking up from his book.

            “Oh. Right.” Yes Mohinder, you’re harboring a wanted criminal, remember? Mohinder cleared his throat a little. “I guess I’ll be back then.” As he grabbed a second sweater (seeing as his jacket was still in Molly’s custody) Mohinder took a look at the list written in Sylar’s slanted scrawl.

_Wheat bread                            Cream of chicken soup           Buttery crackers_  


_Deli-sliced chicken                  Lettuce                                      Mushrooms_

_Chicken breasts                       Onion                                       Peppers_

_Tuna                                         Mayonnaise                              Eggs_

_Earl Grey                                 Chai (no curare)_

            A small laugh escaped Mohinder’s lips. He quickly covered it with a hand. Inappropriate. Totally inappropriate. He grabbed his keys and headed out the door.

            Looking up from his book, Sylar watched the door close as an amused smirk played across his face.

            But that quaint sliver of normalcy could last no longer than the silence could. On the second night, Mohinder leaned back from his chair with a frustrated sigh, rubbing his eyes. Even when Eden was there she had kept up a stream of casual conversation every now and then; when he was with Molly at the lab she had interrupted him with her childish curiosities. When had the silence become so hard to bear? 

            Mohinder watched Sylar move about the kitchen, his new favorite area. He was making lemonade from scratch, of all things, and using his hands to do the squeezing. Mohinder wondered if that was a sort of… manly thing they did in the states. He would have used a juicer, personally. 

Out of mild paranoia, Mohinder had been working on anything _but_ his father’s research in the past couple days. He had been instead looking at research opportunities, seeing where he could apply to continue his work with the added cushion of a grant or two. Of course, what good were plans like that when he had a murderer on the run making lemonade in his kitchen?

            “What are you going to do, Sylar?” Mohinder said finally, turning a pen over and over again between his knuckles as he stared over the counter at the man. He finally set the object down and crossed the room into the kitchen area. He fetched a glass for iced tea, not ready to taste Sylar’s concoction.

            There was a slight grunt from Sylar after he finished squeezing the life out of the lemon half in his hand. “…What am I going to do?”

            “With your life. After you leave here. What about money? What about a place to stay? You’re not seriously going to just stop killing, are you? I find that hard to believe,” Mohinder admitted with a hint of smugness in his voice. Surely he knew Sylar well enough to deduce that much. It was as if now that Mohinder was talking about all of his concerns, all the thoughts buzzing around in his head during the silent hours had come out in a flood of dreadful honesty. Tactless honesty, no less.

            Sylar stopped what he was doing and looked over his shoulder. His chair wheeled itself around to face Mohinder. “Tell me, what do you live for, Mohinder?”

            Mohinder felt an uneasiness creeping in. The way Sylar said his name had never changed, not since the first day they had met. “…For… my research. This cause.”

            “And what if you didn’t have it? What if you had nothing to live for?”

            “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

            Sylar took in a slow breath, as if that might calm the slightly wild look gathering in his eyes, the look that he tried to hold back. “I feel alive when I kill. This is my cause. This gives me purpose,” he explained patiently, as if to a child.

            Mohinder shook his head. “But it doesn’t give you a goal. What is your goal, Sylar?”

            The man stared long and hard at Mohinder. “To…”

            “To be the next stage in evolution?” Mohinder filled in. “You already _are_ that. Didn’t you notice? You won’t stop killing because it will never fill you. You’ll never be through. And once you’re on top, once you’ve killed them all and taken everything you can from them, what then? What will you have learned? Can’t you see how futile it is?”

            Suddenly something snapped. Sylar flung his hand out so fast Mohinder couldn’t be sure if it was his mind or the back of his palm that struck the glass on the counter. He sent it flying into the tiles across the kitchen, shattering with a loud crack into pieces. “Then what am I supposed to do?!” Sylar screamed sharply. “If you know the universe so damned well then tell me **_why I’m in it_**!”

            Startled, Mohinder pulled back and held his breath, the sound of his heart a parade to the other man. There it was again- that hint to Mohinder that Sylar was searching for some greater purpose in all his madness. But neither he, nor Mohinder, had the answer. “I… …I don’t know. Maybe you won’t know… until you face these questions. Until… until you let yourself be human. I think you’ve been running from it all this time,” he breathed out shakily. His hands were gripping the counter behind him tightly. “…I think you’ve been running since you met my father… You thought you found the answer. But you never really did.” Mohinder paused, then finally said: “There are other things in this world to live for.”

            Sylar’s dark eyes watched Mohinder with all the intensity of a predator but with a depth that was more forgiving. “When it’s time to show them to me… I hope you don’t hesitate.”

            Mohinder stared for a long moment at the man before him and then he finally tore his eyes away, leaving the kitchen with the crunch of glass under his feet. He exited to the bedroom and closed the door, needing a little while alone to collect himself.

            Watching Mohinder’s exit, Sylar waited until the door had shut before he gazed down at the broken glass on the floor. For the briefest second, he almost looked as if he wanted to apologize.


End file.
